Category: Mormon Mondays
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[Edited to add new data]: It pains me to have to repost this article given new statistics, but a segment of our country–one in which my children and I belong–is in crisis. It’s so important to add positivity, to add love and kindness and understanding to the world. If you’re new to the world of LGBT literature, I hope you’ll come to learn how important it is for our queer brothers and sisters to just be given the space to be, the space to breathe and live and hope and dream. Denying them this space is literally killing them. We can do better.

“As I have loved you, love one another.”

A stranger I met at the airport insisted her husband drive me to my hotel instead of catching a cab. If this had happened anywhere but in Utah, that would be the start of a horror movie. But in Utah, smiles and help are freely given. These new friends were excited to hear about my purpose for traveling: I was a panelist at what was previously called Salt Lake City Comic Con, the second largest of its kind in the country. They were particularly excited by the subject matter of my panel: On-the-page queer representation in literature.

Oh, I should probably mention they weren’t Mormon, or rather members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were Mormon-adjacent.

For all the good that the Mormon Church does, and they do some outstanding service work and foster a mindset of helping one another, for all those smiles and wholesome pictures of family togetherness that they love to put on billboards and into TV commercials, there’s a dark underbelly that’s of the Church’s own making.

The leading cause of death among Utah teens is suicide.

Not cancer, heart disease, car wrecks or anything else. In fact, Utah teens kill themselves at a rate of four times the national average as of this printing. It’s estimated that forty percent of them are known to be LGBTQ youth, but that number is likely much higher due to a real fear of “coming out” and parents erasing their child’s orientation post-mortem to save face.

In November of 2015, the Mormon Church delivered a Proclamation, an act akin to an Amendment of the Constitution in that the statement becomes Doctrinal Law. They stated that LGB members either cannot ever act on their orientation or they cannot be members. (They completely denounce people who are transgender and forbid gender-confirmation surgery. They also use the term “same-sex attracted”, or SSA to replace LGBTQ because they’re so antiquated they don’t realize sexuality and gender are two separate issues.)

If the LGB/SSA person has already acted on that “feeling” by entering into a committed queer relationship, their children will be denied baptism (membership with all the perks that come with it, such as eternal glory) until they in turn become adults and renounce their parents. For some folks, this became a non-issue. They simply wouldn’t be members.

But Mormonism isn’t just about where you go on Sunday. Mormonism is a culture, particularly in Utah. Mormonism influences everything from who your children play with, who you do business with and in many cases, how successful those businesses are, and it dictates all of your social activities. It’s a 24/7 lifestyle. Sunday is the breather! There’s even a hymn taught to kids, “Saturday is a special day/it’s the day we get ready for Sunday” and then it lists all the tasks you must do to be prepared for Sunday’s three-hour meeting.

Everything about Mormonism centers on the family. You pray together, you play together, you live for ever and ever together. Well, unless you’re an active queer person; then you don’t get to be with your family for ever and ever. (For some of us, that might be a blessing!) But for a devout Mormon, queer or otherwise, that’s a terrifying, isolating thought. Your family is your world. And then they’re…gone. And it’s all your fault.

After this Proclamation, there was a horrifying rash of suicide, both amongst teen Mormons and adults. The despair was real. The hurt and rejection palpable. Those numbers aren’t going down.

The world may have moved on to at least recognize same-sex marriage, but in Utah, time seems to stand still. It’s only been a few decades since there were electroshock treatments at BYU to “cure” people of their “homosexual-tendencies”. The Church pressures its members to utilize Church-owned or Church-approved materials. They create their own magazines, publish books, create movies, and provide family entertainment, so why look elsewhere? And it’s not always easy to find materials outside these religion-sanctioned sources for “prayerful study” to understand why you might feel the way you do about yourself.

Imagine being a kid, around 14 or 15, and you’re questioning either your sexuality or gender. Perhaps you have a “family computer” in the main room, a tactic the Church recommends for morality-policing, so it’s not like you can just Google, “Am I gay?” You can’t drive, so you’re reliant on your parents or a family member to get you places. If you’re in Salt Lake, maybe you go to the mall, but the good mall is owned by the LDS Church—a building where visible tattoos mean you’re escorted from the premises. The bookstores aren’t going to have anything that contradicts the Church’s teachings, so that’s out. Maybe you go to the library. Do you dare venture into the LGBTQ section (that is, if that library has such a thing) to look for information? Do you ask the librarian? What if she goes to your same church and knows your family? You’ve just outed yourself before you even started understanding who you are.

This past June I attended the American Library Association’s convention on behalf of my publisher, Interlude Press, a publication house of queer-focused literature. I learned that this was a real issue for many librarians, who are often the forerunners of connecting queer youth with materials to help educate. Add in religious control, be it direct or perceived, and you have a potentially dangerous situation.

In Utah, this is just what it’s become.

I settled into my seat on the dais at SLCC and looked out on a decently-sized room, roughly two-thirds filled. This is a Comic Con, so a lot of people were in costumes. There were also folks in work-day clothes, nervously taking seats in the back. As the panel began, more people slipped inside, forced to move closer to the front for available seats. Then it was time to introduce myself.

“Hi! I’m Laura Stone, I’m from Lehi with family all over the Valley, and I couldn’t come out as queer until my late 30s. I’m no longer an active Mormon, and all three of my kids are LGBT.” (I know. I’m really lucky.)

The gasp and delighted shock on people’s faces is something I’ll never forget. That was also the first time I’ve ever outed myself in public, and it was the first time I felt safe to do so, which is ironic, given my living experiences up to that point kept me in the closet.

The panel was a huge success, very interactive, and later, I must have stood outside the room for a half hour just witnessing other people’s joy as they told me their stories. All weekend I manned my publisher’s booth, a house that specializes in high-quality queer literature with queer protagonists. If I was still Mormon, I would have likened this experience to Testimony Meeting.

A darling girl, around twenty, came by nervously asking me what our books were about. After giving her the rundown on a few genres, she stopped me with tears welling up in her eyes. “You mean no one dies in these books?” I threw my arms around her as she started crying, rocking her side to side and rubbing her back. “No. No, everyone lives. They get to just live.”

She confessed to me in a broken whisper that she’d wanted to die. I held her tighter and made sure she knew that if she ever felt that way again, she better call me, that we’d talk on the phone until she didn’t feel that way anymore.

I met former missionaries, former temple workers, all who had either tentatively put a foot out of the closet, or had stomped out in a fabulous pair of shoes, daring anyone to challenge them. There was the gay couple who were married in spirit and the lesbian couple who had it legitimized in a court of law. There were lots of happy-faced lesbians and bisexuals who had their family’s support (or who didn’t care if they had it), and nervous gay and trans boys who couldn’t bring themselves to tell their parents. I heard all of these stories, and this was just on the first day of a three day convention.

Two other girls, dressed like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, stopped by several times throughout the Con for hugs and more book recommendations. One great kid with a camera and a manuscript stopped by every morning to be reassured that even though he was straight, it was okay for him to write books that feature queer people. One of our authors is a transman. A blue-haired boy I remembered from the panel’s audience visited him every day, eyes bright and happy to see someone who was just like him. They talked about top-surgery, coming out to parents, and life in general. This boy got to see that not only are there others just like him, but they’re living and thriving. They’re writing stories about characters who live and thrive, too.

Our booth became a safe space for a severely marginalized group of people. The teens and early twenty-somethings who visited us daily needed to see that there are books about them in the world, positive stories that aren’t necessarily about coming out or the trauma of being queer. With Interlude Press there are action-adventure stories that just happen to feature a bisexual Chinese-American (Not Your Sidekick). We have an historical western with a gay Mexican rancher written as an homage to Pride & Prejudice. We have romance, historical, science fiction, YA, high fantasy and literary fiction, and they all have positive queer role models.

My latest novel was titled specifically to signal to queer Mormons: And It Came To Pass. The cover features two obvious LDS missionaries with their hands surreptitiously linked. It follows Adam Young, a devout Mormon on his mission as he realizes that he’s gay. While there is a romantic element to the book, it’s more about a person discovering themselves and what they really believe and how that aligns with a faith that doesn’t accept them. Devout Mormons who happen to be queer have been left by the wayside. I wanted to write a story for them. For us, really, although I no longer actively participate in the Church.

I wanted to write a story for those who believe fervently in a god yet are raised in religions that claim God doesn’t want them.

Initially I wrote the book for a beloved cousin, who did not get a happy ending and quite frankly, whose overbearing, devoutly Mormon father was quoted almost word-for-word in the book. I wrote the happy ending I wished for him. As I’m writing this, I’ve just learned of another Utah suicide, another queer teen who felt hopeless and abandoned. It breaks my heart. I want all of these beautiful, loving, big-hearted people I met to have a happy, or least a hopeful story.

And of my darling, special girl who, with lip trembling and gorgeous, tear-filled doe-eyes whispered that she’d wanted to die? She came to see me every day, too, and got a hug from me every single time. By the third day, she was visibly stronger. She didn’t creep up to the booth, worried she’d interrupt us. I got an excited wave and a bone-squeezing hug, although that may have been from my end. I beamed as she told me about telling her Mormon dad she was a lesbian and how he took it in stride. More importantly, he told her he still loved her and would choose her, always.

One week out from the convention, she sent me a private message through social media. She came out to her whole family. In her words, she was having the most “queer and wonderful” week of her life, and it was just time. Emboldened by visibility and empowered by acceptance, she made the leap out of the closet. The sheer relief and joy she felt as a result came through her rapid-fire messages detailing the experience.

There has to be visibility. There has to be a point where the literary world embraces stories with queer protagonists, and not only the story of trauma and suffering that allows straight people to empathize with us. We need the story where the detective solves the crime, and she happens to be a lesbian with a wife waiting for her at home. We need a story where the adventurer is trans and defeats the evil corporation robbing crypts of their spoils. We need a gay boxer and lesbian scientist and bisexual grocery store clerks who can also see the supernatural. People need to see themselves in media or they buy into the idea that they’re disposable.

These kids, young adults, and disaffected adults matter. These stories matter. Our presence in the world of literature matters. We can do better. We must. Lives are on the line.

A 12 year old girl came out to her Mormon church and they turned the microphone off. What’s that all about? And what was really going in her church that week? Listen to this week’s episode and learn what Fast & Testimony meeting is, and by the end you might be put off food and ready to stand and shout your fervent beliefs, too!

And remember, sharing links and leaving reviews keeps this (free for you!) podcast on air. And we (I) thank you for your support!

It’s hard to keep a secret in a small town.

Even harder is keeping a secret in a deeply religious town where everyone keeps moral tabs on each other, and often under the direction of their religious leaders.

My grandparents had a huge farm in a small mountain town, Lehi, Utah. My father’s high school class of 1965 had eighty-six kids. When I lived with my grandmother during college, there were about 7,000 people in the whole town. Small. Everyone knew everyone else. Lehi is also deeply Mormon. It’s just up the Wasatch front from Provo, Utah, home to BYU and the Missionary Training Center.

“Now I gotta cut loose! Footloose!” Lehi’s claim to fame

For those unfamiliar, when you’re an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it’s more than just attending Sunday meetings with your neighbors. You have morning Seminary for teens, daily Institute if you’re in college, Home Teaching, Visiting Teaching, Relief Society, Sunday night Firesides, Monday night Family Home Evening activities, youth activities on Wednesdays, and of course, Sunday service, which is three hours long.

It’s a lifestyle. Mormons prefer mingling with other Mormons, so you’re usually in each other’s pockets, especially in a small community like Lehi.

Secrets aren’t easy to keep.

In the early ’90s, my grandmother had a stroke, and I moved in to care of her. Those were some of the best months of my life, even though they were tinged with the knowledge that her time was coming to an end. I got to know her in a way most people never do with a grandparent.

She’d grown up the middle sister, her older sister a wildly dynamic and popular young lady. In her 20s, she developed a skin-disease–neurofibromas, raised tumors over her face and body. It always left her feeling like the ugly duckling, leaving her ashamed to be out in public. She’d been the second wife to an older husband who spoke lovingly of his first wife. Due to a “quirk” in the Mormon faith, her husband was still “sealed” for time and all eternity to this first wife, which meant that my grandma would share her husband with his first wife, Florence, forever. Mormons don’t believe in “until death do you part”.

She’d become the caregiver for a rapidly declining husband thirty years her senior while taking over as the main breadwinner for our sprawling family. And through all of this, she always honored her church callings. She never failed to miss a meeting, visit the sick, or feed the hungry.

After her stroke, she was just tired. She wanted to be left alone and didn’t care for what felt like false sympathy from the neighbors she’d known for decades, able to see the performance for what it was. Instead of entertaining visitors, my job was to turn people away with kindness and help carry her to her Big Chair where she would read.

It’s time to talk about sex. Awww, yeah, we’re talking the talk now! Except you shouldn’t be thinking of sex! Oh my gosh, are you thinking about it right now? Oh, no… Stop it! I don’t know, sing a hymn at your crotch!* GO EAT A MAPLE-GLAZED DONUT. Did you stop thinking of sex? Well why on earth not? GREAT. There goes God’s plan. Thanks for nothing, buddy.

This week I’ll discuss the positively baffling and obsessive mindset Mormons have about sex. (I mean, you don’t get those big Mormon families from a handshake… Or do you?)

*Actual instruction from the Church for ridding oneself of an erection. Listen and find out more ways to control yourself, even while asleep!

Gay Mormons? (And Lesbian Mormons, Trans Mormons, Bi-Mormons, which does anyone even think they acknowledge bisexuality? Pfft!) Are there LGBTQ Mormons? How does that even work? Surprise! It doesn’t! Well, they’re trying, both the church and the members. Sometimes. Well, kind of? Listen to this week’s episode and let’s see if we can figure out what the heck and how the heck. (And you’ll get a little sneak peek at my upcoming novel, AND IT CAME TO PASS, about a missionary who realizes he’s gay while serving in Barcelona, Spain. Oh my heck!)

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing! (And thanks for listening!)

We’re back with the final polygamy episode where I’ll go into some more detail about how groups like Warren Jeff’s YFZ Ranch came to be, how accurate the show Big Love was, and the (small) part I played with the Texas Rangers taking out a bunch of real low-lifes out in ElDorado, TX. Some of what I share has never been spoken of publicly… You won’t want to miss this one!

Be sure to subscribe and download–the episodes disappear! (That is, until I upgrade my podcasting host.)

It’s finally here: the Polygamy Papers! Well, not paper, because it’s an audiofile. Podcast. WHATEVER. Look, it’s all the dirty details of how polygamy got started, and it’s so big a topic that we’re breaking it into multiple episodes. This particular episode is voiced by the one and only Kathleen Turner! By which I mean a congested me.

*No Kathleen Turners were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Be sure to share the podcast with friends–or your enemies! I’m not the judge of you!–and leave me comments or questions right here.

(The final episode of the polygamy series will have a list of resources and a reading list, should that be a thing you’re into!)

What do teenagers, flesh-eating bacterias and $244 million dollars a year all have in common? Mormon Missions!

This week’s episode is twice as long with triple the content (that math could work if you’d just let it be) with loads of stories about what really happens on missions, and a whole lot of information the LDS Church would prefer you didn’t pay attention to…

And if you want to read my novel about life on an LDS mission and coming out “while Mormon”, you can pre-order AND IT CAME TO PASS here.

…did you say Mormons baptize dead people?? Well, yes. But not like you think. They aren’t grave robbing and plopping corpses into tubs of water in the temple. They’re just stealing the names of dead people!

That doesn’t make it sound better, huh?

Listen to this week’s episode and learn some of the famous people who are now Mormon! Like Golda Meir! *cough*

Be sure to subscribe on Soundcloud or through iTunes/Stitcher so you don’t miss an episode!

This week is all about “What the heck?” When did your family become Mormon? What’s with the no swearing? Are you saying Mormons are the originators of Fake News? Are you just disgruntled? Whoa, you great-great-grandfather had how many dead wives? Do you honestly have a recipe for pancakes with 7-Up as an ingredient?

…I hate that I do, you guys. I hate that I do. Listen and find out “What the heck?”

About The Author

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Laura Stone, a life-long fangirl and geek since the days of Compuserve accounts, was finally able to devote her energy to writing full-time after several years of acting, studying Microbiology, becoming a Master Gardener, and raising children. They're not fully raised, but then, neither is she.
Laura is a descendant of pioneer polygamists from the early days of the Mormon Church and a former Gospel Doctrine teacher. She has over 160 first cousins. See: Mormons with big Mormon families.
She lives in Texas as proof that it's not completely populated by hard-line right wingers. And because that's where the good tamales are.
And It Came To Pass, now in bookstores May 18, 2017. Order a copy at the following locations:INTERLUDE PRESS(note: I've had people very kindly ask where to make a purchase that best benefits me. Buying straight from my publisher does just that! But hey, a buy is a buy is a buy and I love you.) Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple/iBooks,Target, Kobo, Smashwords, Book Depository, Indiebound

The Bones Of You, now available everywhere fine books (and heck, some mediocre books) are sold, such as:
AmazonB & N, iTunes, Smashwords, and the IP Store.
I'm proud to announce that THE BONES OF YOU is an IndieFab Foreward's Review 2014 Book Of The Year Finalist in two categories: LGBT and Romance!
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